Guild Wars 2

Some cool fights man! Been using a very similar build myself lately; those glyphs can hit pretty kitten hard if you bust out the might. Some pretty rad offensive plays in those fights.

The only real criticism I can give you that is within your control (it would be good to see you fight some better opponents – they don’t really seem to know how to fight you) is that you waste your dodges a fair bit. It can be very tempting to dodge because you feel more agile (we all fall for this at some point), but it rarely benefits you more than a crucial dodge would.

Keep it up and look forward to seeing more from you in the future!

The one thing I can say is don’t build exclusively for healing. It is HIGHLY unlikely that you will be constantly healing in raids from what we have seen (especially with good groups), you will be spot healing when necessary. It does not make sense to bring something focused entirely on intensive healing, as they are trying to avoid that sort of design mentality. If you have some ascended armor, I suggest you invest in switching them to Zealots or Crusader stats. You will want to mix your damage with your support, as both will be important. If you don’t want to invest in Zealots, I suggest mixing in some Berserker pieces at the cost of +healing power.

It is my opinion that power is a more valuable investment than condi for damage, as Staff is your primary source of AF generation and it has no condition synergy. It is also easy to invest in both power and +healing via. Clerics, Zealots and Crusader.

In short, yes! As Holland stated, LB/GS had gained significant popularity in WvW within the last year (especially the last 6 months or so) of vanilla GW2. While it is not as effective in bulk as GWERN, a LB ranger or two make excellent assassins and the druid spec gave the class a new dynamic in the form of CA heal support.

I actually made a whole bunch of different LB/Staff builds in preparation for HoT, each of which has its own merits. Personally, I prefer to go full zerk, but you can mix in some EHP (toughness/vitality) or HP (healing power; I’ve found around 500 really rounds off the heals /w outgoing healing mods). If your positioning is good, and you are reacting to enemy movements then you can afford to drop almost all defensive stats and focus on your pewpew.

I’ma copy pasta – so some things might seem outdated due to patching:

HoT Ranger Builds for FP:

Things to keep in mind:

- Condi cleanse shouldn’t be a huge issue, with Celestial Avatar cleansing all condis upon activation if traited.
- You will need 1 (ideally 2) stun-breaks, excluding the CA transform trait, which I highly recommend as you will gain enough AF frequently when fighting at this scale.
- Pets are generally fodder and die quickly if you get caught by the train, even if you escape. If your positioning is good, they should survive long enough for you to keep re-applying swap buffs on CD.
- Glyphs are not ideal if playing from the back-line. Equality can be good, however, if you are frequently being singled out by thieves or you just want a lower CD stun-break than Zephyr.
- Positioning is everything.

Build 1: Skirmishing (my personal favorite)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATWjEqQLL2wCmsAVLW2DM43ad9vuc7CAnNmBWAbEMi0A-TFCFABrpL4QVKA4RAUo6KXpEEJlf1s/wCHBgAAIAszduzduzdWIgyjBA-w

- 8% crit chance to party /w Spotter (taking this allows you to grab some extra health and maintain ~50% crit)
- Vigor on evade (8s ICD)
- Fury on weapon swap
- Access to some extra burst damage or healing, stealth, CC or mobility /w Quick Draw (this also works on CAF skills such as Lunar Impact).

NOTE: No condi cleanse outside of CA.
NOTE: Although you are not getting CD reduction on your Survival skills, they are still excellent choices for escaping tricky situations.

Build 2: Beastmastery

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATWnUqAtsgNsA2CCctgl9AD+tWX/rL3uAwZ7JOUueajIN-TFCFABHqWBAPCgCVV5KlgIp8rm9HSTXwCHBgAAIAszduzduzdWIgyjBA-w

- Permanent swiftness and regen to allies, if they are within the 360 radius of the shout cast.
- You get some extra might and quickness from pet swapping every 15s (if the pet doesn’t die and put it on a longer CD).
- Your pet gains some passive regen to keep it alive (added to the regen boon share it’s quite nice).
- Your pet does more damage. The Smokescale and Bristleback pets make excellent assassins if you can manage their health, and the AI/tracking doesn’t fail you.
- You get another damage immunity, provided your pet is still alive. It is also a stun-break replacement for Quickening Zephyr (same CD when traited). You can combo this with the Smokescale F2 to remove the risk of your pet dying.
- You get a 10s stability + damage boost on a 48s CD

NOTE: No condi cleanse outside of CA transform + Seed of Life.

Build 3: Wilderness Survival

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATWjEqQLL2wCmsAVLW2DM43ad9vuc7CAntmC2vbIMi0A-TFCFABHqWBAPCgCVV5KlgIp8rm9HSTXwCHBgAAIAszduzduzdWIgyjBA-w

- Access to lots of condi cleanse outside of CA transform.
- Lower CD on vital stun-breaks, heal and elite CC (which also remove condi, as mentioned before)
- A small 5% damage reduction when under the effects of regen, which is triggered or received often.
- Annoying poison for 6s (10s ICD) if above 90% health, which I usually am unless I am being singled out.

It’s not perfect, but it is FAR from useless. Using CAF/Druid traits as an augmentation rather than a focus yields incredibly good results. Why y’all acting like GW2 was going to change it’s entire design philosophy based on one class? PvP/WvW Druid is great (again, not perfect) and we haven’t even been able to play the PvE content that the Druid spec was designed for.

Chill out, kitten .

Tragic Positive.9356:

Wyrdfell.8327:

You just don’t know how to play it that’s all…

^

^

Yeah, the cele build seems pretty viable. Personally, I hate it. I don’t enjoy how mind-numbingly boring it is to play.

No problem hombre!

Good to see more people taking up the healing role in WvW!

Personally, I’d drop NM as many of the traits will often lose effectiveness due to the nature of WvW combat. There’s a good chance your pet will die, depending on how close you play to the train (to give them Rejuv Tides water field + heals) which will leave your quickness on a very long CD and your boons → pet will go unused. The weakness/protection will also often proc long before you’re in range of your enemies to reap the benefits. Not saying they are totally useless, but there are more reliable trait lines that are effective all the time.

My go to choice is now Skirmishing, as the vigor, swiftness, fury, +prec group buff and Quick Draw are seriously great for the druid. Quick Draw actually works when entering or exiting CAF, meaning you can do a double Lunar Impact or Rejuv Tides and then (if you stay in CAF long enough) a double Ancestral Grace (the second one can be combo’d with your Sublime Conversion field for extra heals).

Good luck out there!

AFAIK, the druid wasn’t made for healing over time, which ele might have if they camp water. It was made for intense burst healing, which is certainly has.

Are you using the Enlargement trait in Marksmanship? I heard a week ago that it kicks you out of CAF when it triggers, but don’t know if that’s still the case.

Great vid, man! See you around on Poiken!

Daharahj.1325:

aB EXT.1287:

It sucks being left in the dark, but we all have to remember that they are busy doing their jobs. Getting involved in debates with online communities will not help development. Yes, they could drop by with the occasional statement (which we do actually get) so that we know they are listening, but the time and energy that would be sunk into internet circlejurks would take away from actual changes making it into the game. Devs are human beings too, and the amount of disrespect and general turdiness would eat away at even the strongest soul. Some input would be nice from prominent members of the community, but you’re assuming that these people do not also have an agenda (and the selection process would likely be full of QQ). It’s a verrrrry tricky situation to put yourself in as a developer.

Right now, we can see that the devs are listening to feedback and things are getting fixed (they fixed staff ability queuing last patch – woooo), we just have to be patient.

In short, I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying it is significantly more complicated than it seems.

There’s absolutely no excuse, no matter how much load they’ve got on their shoulders, they let so many things get out of control before saying something, WHaO, smokescale’s active, LL, etc. They NEED to start giving us context for these changes, and for future changes as well. All their answers have been the same reactionary bs “oops, here, have this, we’re also nerfing that because we’re so random lool”.

I don’t know, maybe I was spoiled by companies that can actually manage their communication in a professional manner.

I’m just playing devils advocate here.

This was actually similar to my opinion before I talked to a guildy about it, and he raised some very good points. We all act like we’d be better off as a community if the devs had more open communication with us, but it probably wouldn’t actually change anything. It might ease the minds of a few people who genuinely value the dialogue, but we’d all still be here whining like always about proposed changes and telling each other that the other person is wrong. The fact is that the devs have ideas of what they want to do, so they do it. We try it out and give our feedback, which they choose to listen to or ignore. Yeah, it can feel like we’re in perpetual beta sometimes, but this is a reality with most games.

It sucks being left in the dark, but we all have to remember that they are busy doing their jobs. Getting involved in debates with online communities will not help development. Yes, they could drop by with the occasional statement (which we do actually get) so that we know they are listening, but the time and energy that would be sunk into internet circlejurks would take away from actual changes making it into the game. Devs are human beings too, and the amount of disrespect and general turdiness would eat away at even the strongest soul. Some input would be nice from prominent members of the community, but you’re assuming that these people do not also have an agenda (and the selection process would likely be full of QQ). It’s a verrrrry tricky situation to put yourself in as a developer.

Right now, we can see that the devs are listening to feedback and things are getting fixed (they fixed staff ability queuing last patch – woooo), we just have to be patient.

In short, I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying it is significantly more complicated than it seems.

Hammerguard.9834:

The ele was in starter gear and stood still while not even immob staring at the pet, and the thief was just bad (deselected and heartseekered passed you). Why is this on youtube?

For people like yourself, of course. Who knows what would happen to you if people didn’t soak up some of that salt water in your lungs.

Don’t worry dude, I got you <3.

The question is… do you have the stomach for it?

Seriously though, they will probably be messing around with the druid for a while to come and we may not like the results when they are through. If you don’t already have a deep interest/enjoyment of the class then I’d avoid it until things have stabilized.

Hmmm, I don’t really agree with that Susanoo. I used CAF to daze the thief and heal to full in its duration (without wasting a major heal CD), then stealth myself mid stomp on the ele. I was also able to stealth myself before the second stomp using the staff blast (granted, this would have been more useful vs. another class and I did have Hunters Shot off CD again, but stealth is stealth and I looked way cooler). Druid definitely played an important part in how cleanly this went down (though the stars of the video are clearly the corpses). I’m sure that had this fight lasted longer than 30s, it would have played an even bigger role.

Also, druid is excellent for both dueling and roaming in my experience due to its excessive stun-break capability (if built for it), insane condi cleanse (if built for it) and various utility via. more access to stealth, more reliable evades and excellent heals.

If you aren’t focusing on a being a heal-bot, you can treat the druid as a very strong utility set that adds a different dynamic to how the class plays. You basically double up on many of the important things you need to survive (CC/stun-break/stealth/condi-cleanse/heals). It has saved me SO many times so far.

I have no idea how this could have been done ‘more effectively’ with the base ranger, however, and would love to see your reasoning for that statement. I roamed extensively pre-HoT and have never felt more confident, despite many other classes becoming stronger.

Also, everything is gross atm.

https://youtu.be/l9QP2IZJoGM

Yeaaaaaahhhhh… whoops.

Irenio, you made the right choice. I believe in you.

LegallyBinding.4937:

BOOO, terrible change Anet. You killed a great pet by giving into forum warriors that DO NOT represent the vast majority of players in this game.

Dude, you know there was a poll right (around 300 people voted last I checked)? Smoke field on F2 won by an absolute landslide. It is fair to say from that sample that the vast majority of people wanted the smoke field. Forum warriors or not, the vocal majority got what they wanted.

Also, you can still do the exact same burst combo with basic pet management.

neville.3420:

smokescale f2 was swapped back

hehehehehehe

Raven.9603:

There are few Druids because other than the novelty of being something new, there is NO reason to be one.

• Doing group WvW? The mobile water field is powerful, but staff has no place in zergs (no tags) and TU is a poor choice for zergs, so unless you kitten yourself to overcome the awful state of AF gen you aren’t going to see CA. That makes it only very marginally better than the (completely unwanted) Ranger. Which is all a moot point anyway, because with the stupid changes to autoatic waypointing no one defends anything anyway, and you dont need a healer for a freaking karma train. Which puts us back at running PvE meta ranger as the best choice for K train.

AF generation is actually in a pretty good spot in large group WvW play (15+). Even if you play from the back-line using LB+Staff you still generate a LOT of AF due to the fast attacks of LB and staff damage/healing on multiple enemies and allies. My guild runs with relatively small numbers in open WvW (15-20) and I have absolutely no trouble accessing CAF. The healing/stealth+ss/cc I bring to my fellow assassins is incredibly useful. We’re all incredibly critical of everything each class brings, and none of us have any doubts about the extra depth druid has brought to the group. It’s not perfect, but it absolutely works. Any buffs would definitely be a welcome bonus.

Personally, I have had much greater success focusing on damage with a dab of healing if necessary (using outgoing healing mods to bump them up to god-tier), using CAF on a per-situation basis – instead of focusing entirely on being a healbot. I can still spike big heals on the fp/casters/train when needed, I can escape the vast majority of situations with even more ease, I can dish out intense, focused damage pressure from range, and I can pull off some awesome CC plays safer than ever (some of which I straight up couldn’t do before due to the clunkiness of the GS leap).

I really like that cosmic ray idea! I hate reticle spamming, so turning it into a smart heal would be a significant improvement in most cases. I’m not sold on the pet component though, as that could get really messy in different game modes.

Dawdler.8521:

In WvW its unfortunetly DOA. The staff has good utility but as a weapon its godawful. You will be lucky to get a couple of lootbags when you wipe 50 man. The glyphs being very short range pbaoe means the only way to use them is rushing straight in and the druid doesnt really have the survivability for that. Its also really lacking a constant AoE heal. Guardian and elementalist healer beat it IMO while offering just as good utility in zerg warfare.

In a PuG zerg, you are correct. A guardian or elementalist will likely have a bigger impact on a fight against 50 people due to their important party buffs and AOE damage. However, this is simply not true from an organised WvW standpoint.

I am having incredible success with WvW druid, as are many other players from skilled WvW guilds. The staff, as you said, offers strong utility, but its damage is also respectable considering it recharges your AF like nothing else (especially when you’re with a group of 15+). It is also amazing for countering reflects, as the AA ignores reflects/projectile blocks; there is no more ‘locked into greatsword’ down time. I am currently playing a FP sniper, running some +healing and EHP stats to round off my zerker heals and allow me to soak a little more (it’s very possible to run full zerk though, and I tend to in scrims). My superior range, CC (immob for daze, errr days) and finishing ability, combined with my ability to top off and reset my fellow FP members has made me invaluable. You are very hard to track, lock down and kill due to your access to stealth, mobility and burst healing.

Druid is far from useless, despite the nerf-hammer.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

aB EXT.1287:

Not reaaaaally. I assume it helped a bit (1 extra heal tick every 3s aint exactly nothing) when camping Staff, but I didn’t even test if it added to AF gen. Doesn’t feel much different now that it’s gone though.

Well, one tick from the pet and one from yourself every 3s would be pretty easy to do, the more from each ally affected. Its not a global CD, its per ally. So in WvW, it could be massive.

Oh really? Thought it was GCD. Nice!

Not reaaaaally. I assume it helped a bit (1 extra heal tick every 3s aint exactly nothing) when camping Staff, but I didn’t even test if it added to AF gen. Doesn’t feel much different now that it’s gone though.

Here’s what really confuses me about this arguement…

The Smokescale does not do good damage outside of Smoke Assault. The only reason to swap to the SS is to use Smoke Assault, right? I mean it has its knockdown, but that is available in the same way regardless of what F2 we have. Smoke Assault is the first skill that the Smokescale would use upon swapping in its old iteration. Are you guys just camping Smokescale? That doesn’t seem very efficient.

Having Smoke Cloud on auto means that you will lose more damage, because your pet is wasting pathing time putting down smokes you probably don’t even want, putting it even further behind the target.

With Smoke Cloud on F2, your pet will instantly trigger Smoke Assault (the only real reason to have the pet active in its current state) meaning that you can still line up your might stacking/burst combos perfectly just by pet swapping.

Camp a better DPS pet until you want your burst > swap to SS + use your CDs of choice > WHaO… it’s that easy. Then you also have an on demand, useful field that you can use to escape/re-position/stop a stomp/stack party stealth that will not result in an overall damage loss by being triggered by AI automatically, at pointless times.

What am I missing here? Not trying to sound pedantic, I just honestly don’t get it. I have used the current SA F2 as well, and I agree that it has some value, but I could do the exact same thing before except now I don’t have my smoke field.

Levetty.1279:

aB EXT.1287:

Hey man, it’s ok. Despite the recent nerfs to certain aspects of the Druid, and the vast amounts of QQ here on the forums, it is actually still quite good. Granted, some of the nerfs have been a bit OTT, but we’re only a week into HoT… there’s plenty of tuning left to be done. We all feel the pain of being first on the block, but we wont be the last.

I swear, Anet could have given us an elite spec that deleted our account and siphoned money out of our banks and people would still try to claim it was good.

Woah now, just because it doesn’t work for whatever reason you had hoped, doesn’t mean it doesn’t still work for other people who have found a use for it.

I don’t like the way they have handled the class so far, or the nerfs, but it still works.

Hey man, it’s ok. Despite the recent nerfs to certain aspects of the Druid, and the vast amounts of QQ here on the forums, it is actually still quite good. Granted, some of the nerfs have been a bit OTT, but we’re only a week into HoT… there’s plenty of tuning left to be done. We all feel the pain of being first on the block, but we wont be the last.

Yeah, the lengths you have to go to just to access the areas are a bit ridiculous; even more so given you only have 10-15mins to get to both and the E-Wyvern platform is awkward as hell to reach.

After my map completed the event, I was sent into a panicked frenzy trying to reach each pet in time… not exactly fun, but I will admit that it made my success very satisfying.

This is not an issue if you know how to CC. Druids are INCREDIBLY susceptible to crowd control effects. I’ve been bursted down in seconds by capable players that realize this.

I imagine that the Lingering Light nerf was based off both PvE and PvP. The ICD was short enough to almost permanently blind a player or creature, while damaging them and healing yourself.

That being said, they nerfed it WAY too much – to the point of being pretty bad. 6-8s would have been more than enough, but 12s makes it very unattractive when compared to the other GM traits (let’s hope they don’t get nerfed too).

What they need to do is fix the ability queing on staff, making it work the same way as mesmer GS.

Due to the fact that the auto attack is a channeled ability and does not have a chain, it needs to be interrupted upon the cast of a new spell. This would fix a lot of problems with the staff fluidity.

Revenant CoR can very easy hit 9k+ on average armor targets (around 2500 armor) on a 2s CD (also can’t be reflected) and the auto-attack frequently does 4-5k at 1500 range (+300 due to projectile bonus).

The problem isn’t necessarily the damage, but how easy it is to access and how little effort it takes to do. Yes, an enemy can dodge it once, maybe even twice, but even if they manage that, the 3rd one will probably kill them (6s into the fight).

If weapons need specific OP skills to be viable, then the weapon is not well balanced across all of its skills. This is even more horrible than Rapid Fire, and on par with, if not worse than Gun Flame.

Hammer #2 needs to be looked at.

I’m all for DH being effective, but it should not be effective because of something brokenly OP.

I watched an enemy walk over my friends (DH) 2 traps yesterday, in WvW. They died almost instantly; downed on trigger and killed in 2s by the damage pulses.

We just sat on a cliff and watched it happen. That is not okay.

Oh man… this is a sad sight. The 400% nerf just totally killed this trait. I think we all agree that it was OP, but all it needed was a 6-8s CD to make it balanced; 12s is useless.

I get that they want to try and balance things, but these knee-jerk reaction nerfs are getting pretty depressing. There are plenty of very obviously OP things on other classes right now (cough DH Elite Trap cough), and yet we are starting to feel victimized by the relentless nerf bat.

Please go back to nerfing by margins; this trait is now garbage and we don’t want to wait months (or years) for them to be fixed again.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Going to be investigating this. It may require some change to Smoke Assault, since the active skills are intended to be a little stronger than the passive skills.

My hero! faints

Dojo.1867:

I completely diagree. 2h event chain for a pet how do they DARE to make something remotely hard to obtain. A pet that will be usable for the rest of all times on your ranger. 2 hours, come on people.

Do you want everything handed to you for free? Then you also complain about too easy content. If you want this wyvern then do this minimal effort.

For real?

A big problem that I keep seeing all over the GW2 forums/reddit, is that people do not understand what legitimately difficult/challenging content is. There is this insane ‘counter-qq’ QQ happening now, as a backlash to all the people complaining about various things. If you’re going to try and shut people down, do it with logic and make sure that your argument makes sense for each individual case.

When you lock something behind something else that is almost entirely out of your control, that is no longer a challenge, it is a gate. If they wanted to make getting this pet a challenge that you had to work for, they could have done it in other ways.

Let’s say you work as an engineer and there’s an excellent machine in a store room somewhere that will help you do your job better, in a potentially vital way. The problem is, even though the machine would otherwise be easy to get to, everyone in the building must complete a logic puzzle within a set time-period before you, specifically, can use it. The vast majority of people in the building may not have any interest in using the machine, because they are not engineers, so they have less incentive to complete the logic puzzle. In order to get a good shot at this, you must drop everything you are doing and wait in a que for 2 hours to participate. You find the puzzle easy every time, but a few people keep making mistakes, costing you 2 hours of your time and your chance at using the machine.

That is not fun, or a challenge, or a way to enhance a sense of reward for putting in work.

Hi Irenio/devs!

Please take a look at the way Staff casts attacks. Right now, finishing the staff auto-attack cast will take priority over newly queued abilities. This is a huge problem, especially when trying to aim Vine Surge (Staff #4) and using Ancestral Grace (Staff #3) to avoid specific attacks. Having to wait for the auto to finish means there’s a very good chance of missing #4, or not evading the damage you intend to with #3.

Since Mesmer GS already has the coding for this – it is definitely possible, and would make the staff feel significantly more responsive (it’s a bit clunky right now).

Thanks!

IRENIO, YOU HANDSOME DEVIL!

Thanks for this fix, it drastically improves the usability of CA. Hope there’s more of this to come!

Thanks for putting this guide together, gonna try it out later! Not a big fan of celestial/bunker play.

For pure WvW support, I recommend a train focused Druid build like this (remember that the build calcs do not have the updated trait/skill tooltips):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWRn0rCtsgNsAWsCEtil/AD+sGXnrLFhFQAgZflv2AlMtxA-TFCGAB7pEkgDBQjq/Y0+DOp87NdBAcBAO4JAQKA/GDA-w

Here’s the break down of the key traits/interactions:

- Spotter for 7% crit to party
- Quick Draw for burst heals and extremely high mobility. When entering or exiting CA form (within the confines of the ICD rules) you will trigger this, allowing you to use Lunar Impact or Rejuvenating Tides twice in rapid succession and Ancestral Grace x 2 within 5s of each other. This is a double blast or double escape.
- Enlargement for self-stability when in trouble.
- Brutish Seals for reducing the above stability, as well as the CD on Signet of Stone.
- Remorseless is the only useful choice here with our weapons, and has insane synergy with the Revenant fury pulse which will trigger opening strikes (100% crit + 175% damage + Vuln stacks) every 3s. This will significantly help with your damage, especially if you switch to GS for Maul.
- Druidic Clarity is our shortest CD of our 3 stun-breakers and takes care of our lack of condi cleanse.
- Natural Stride will significantly reduce soft-CC duration’s, which is vital for train players.
- Grace of the Land will give your allies a significant damage increase when spamming heals in CA. If you want to play a bit more trickily, I suggest switching to Ancient Seeds for CC (you have access to a lot of daze, and this trait will proc in AOE if you hit all targets with a single attack).
- Monk runes + Rice Ball + Natural Mender will give you a futher 30% healing increase on top of your ~1600 healing power.
- You can swap the power increase spanner for more +healing if you want to focus mostly on just healing.
- You can use Glyph of Equality offensively when in CA to pull in nearby enemies, similar to the Guardian GS #5, albeit with a shorter range.
- You can switch out some +healing for more toughness/vitality/power by trading some Magi armor for PVT or Sentinels.
- You could switch out GS for x/WH, but I prefer the damage, mobility and block on GS.
- You can switch out a sigil on your weapon of choice for healing stacks if you want.

N.B: If you do not have a Revenant in your party, but have reliable Guardian stability then you can switch the Marksmanship line out for WS or NM traits.

Justine.6351:

Vamp Rook.7835:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

If regen were removed it would be in all modes. I’ve seen that in PvP it is also a pretty heavy gating, but in PvE it is appears worse due to the more frequent travel time between engagements.

What about fix AF generation? It’s almost impossible to reach celestial form in PvP.

https://youtu.be/aQ6gxY8B6r0

kitten , it pains me to see how long it took to charge up CA. You were in combat, constantly attacking for a whole minute until the bar was full.

Hey Irenio, thanks a whole bunch for your response; it really puts people at ease to hear that things are being looked into, from the man with the plan.

I sincerely hope you go forward with this change (or reversion) as it drastically improves the fluidity and feel of the druid. I’m sure you are, but please give the same attention to the other outcries here, such as the force gen from damage and the Smokescale F2 change (which has been overwhelming negative in response from the community).

<3

I am really torn.

I seriously love the traits for 1v1 and WvW organised play, and I really like how the staff plays, but I seriously dislike the way that CA works right now.

- I rarely get to use it unless I channel staff #1 through my team/pet. AF generation is way too slow. It has a CD now, so it shouldn’t matter if you generate it faster in group content, as long as it’s usable in small scale, which it isn’t currently. Way too many gates.
-CA Skill #1 is completely worthless for reasons that people have mentioned a million times over.
- Losing AF within seconds of leaving CA is absolutely brutal and seems unnecessary,
- The Smokescale is now pointless unless you use WHaO (for might stacking). Moving the smoke field off the F2 was a huge mistake.

If these things are addressed then I will be completely happy with the Druid. If they aren’t, however, I will probably quit the game. BWE3 (despite its imperfections) gave me so much hope, and renewed my GW2 vigor. The last few days have been very disappointing, even more so given the complete lack of communication.

I’m sure everyone at ANET is working incredibly hard, but this is not being handled well. For now, I will keep reminding myself that it has only been 3 days since release. I just REALLY hope that the Dev in charge of re-tuning the Druid/Ranger seriously considers the feedback (mostly just criticism, let’s be honest), and understands that these posts come from a place of passion and love for the class, and should be taken seriously.

Gather, family, as we collectively grieve for the loss of one of the strongest assets to the Ranger class, in the form of the Smokescale F2 smoke field.

You met a cruel, undeserved fate.

RIP (or return, that’s also totally cool. pls.)

Cya in the pits, where we will grieve for what almost was… true ranger viability.

Pnoi.8903:

On demand smoke field gave me the ability to res allies getting stomped in clutch situations. F2, staff 3 , res. Gave me control over my own protection when I needed to gtfo. Please revert it back, it was way too valuable to have been given up. I genuinely have a headache just thinking about this horrible decision sad part is, it just a game.

I feel you, brother/sister. I wasn’t exactly happy about the other changes we’ve witnessed, but this F2 change breaks my heart a little. The Smokescale F2 was one of the defining strengths of Rangers in HoT.

I would argue that Smokescale F2 was a significant factor in re-considering the rangers place in the meta. Not because the F2 was OP, but because it opened up new utility value for the class.

mistsim.2748:

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

and doing so means you’ll need pet on passive at all times .

do you know how to animation cancel? would this be too difficult for you to learn?

come on you guys, you are turning in to a bunch of divas. 90% of you honestly haven’t a clue about what exactly youre complaining. Eura wanted to use this for his team comp in competitive pvp, and hes basically throwing a fit about it. for the rest if you, it doesn’t matter one bit. youre just getting on board the negativity train, because it’s cool to complain about the ranger. youre getting so caught up in it that youre failing to see what we do have.

ive said everything I needed to say on the smokescale. /exists thread and never comes back.

Look, literally everyone here is disagreeing with you. It takes a special kind of ignorance (that you seem to claim we have, funny) to disagree so wholeheartedly with every other experienced ranger here.

It is fine for you to have your own opinion, but what you’re doing now is the exact opposite of what you think you’re doing.

mistsim.2748:

Fluffball.8307:

Anything as strong (or inconvenient) as a smoke field must have better control than might stacking. You can’t just use smoke fields all willy nilly and get good results

Even if they use it most of the time after such and such skill, I’m tired of trying to plan around the AI decisions.

the smoke field is controllable, that’s what I’m telling u guys. it comes right after the Smoke Assault. test it out for yourself. if you don’t want the smoke field there and then, don’t cast Smoke Assault. it’s very easy for people to pick up on this as they start seeing more smokescales in pvp.

So your solution is to recall the pet so that it doesn’t use 1 skill? That is a perfect example of bad design.

While OP is acting out of passion, the point isn’t wrong.

I was a huge fan of druid in the BWE, and have very high hopes for the spec… but if they are gonna keep making ridiculous changes like this (and the other undocumented changes), then I will sharply run out of reasons to justify playing druid. This recent change to the Smokescale F2 is, IMHO, the worst of all so far.